More sneaky types also have the option to use stealth for more efficient kills that prevent you from getting swarmed by foes who tend to come in droves as entering a room guns a blazing is the best way to have an officer turn on the alarms. The game’s shooting mechanics feel good and on point, whether you’re shooting a rifle, dual wielding machine guns or firing scorching lasers that can disintegrate your foes.
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The gameplay itself is quite solid, which is no surprise given my experience with the first game. Although the game certainly has its share of caricatures, it also layers that with multidimensional characters, with the daughter of a crazy Nazi general surprisingly being the most likable of the bunch. Blazkowicz's allies aren't all bastions of humanity for sure and I thought it was ironic how one of the game's disturbing examples of prejudice comes from a minortiy character whou should know better. The game wouldn’t even let me kill the “bad guys” without giving me a guilty conscience. It actually made me pause and hesitate to shoot the guy down until I noticed my dwindling health and decided to kill him before he killed me. That is, until one of the many nameless Nazis I shot at ran toward me, yelling that the cannon fodder I just dispassionately killed a second ago was his brother. It almost made mowing down countless Nazis OK. The shooting segments practically felt like a much-needed release of the emotional cocktail that swirled within my mind, a welcome respite to the heavy body blows of an often heartbreaking and emotionally taxing narrative. Despair, anger, sadness and pity - I felt all of that within the first few minutes of the game. It was like playing a World War II version of Game of Thrones.Īs some developers start to shy away from story-based, single-player games, Wolfenstein II doubles down on the genre by serving up a narrative designed to draw a plethora of emotions from the deepest corners of your soul.
#Bj blazkowicz wolfenstein 2 series
Wolfenstein II has no qualms about showing gut-wrenching acts of prejudice and outright gory violence, including a series of events that were so disturbing, I almost wanted to turn off the game to take a break just 10 minutes or so after starting. Engel certainly does not have a monopoly on cruelty in this game.
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After having her face disfigured in the first game thanks to Blazkowicz, General Frau Engel returns to wreak cruel vengeance on the game’s protagonist by going after the people he cares about. Serving as the antagonist is a familiar face, literally and figuratively. Now the resistance sets its sights toward the United States, where it hopes to establish a beachhead for countering Nazi oppression around the globe. Instead, Blazkowicz is a shell of his former self, a man who literally sacrificed almost everything in the name of freedom.Īlthough Blazkowicz managed to take out a crucial cog of the Nazi machine in the first game, the Reich remains the dominant force across the world. Gone is the peak physical specimen who wreaked havoc among the Nazi ranks and gained him the nickname Terror-Billy. Blazkowicz returns broken and on borrowed time. His survival, however, comes with a steeper price this time around. Set in a world where the United States lost and the Nazis won, The New Colossus shows a terrifying alternate reality that’s turned up to its most horrifying extreme for maximum effect.įollowing the events of the first game, protagonist BJ Blazkowicz narrowly cheats death and survives yet again. Nevertheless, it makes the narrative told in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus a lot more powerful - and more frightening to boot.
![bj blazkowicz wolfenstein 2 bj blazkowicz wolfenstein 2](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jxajRhaM38A/maxresdefault.jpg)
The developers say the timing is purely coincidental. Instead, the ideological battles that were supposedly won in World War II are once again being re-fought on the internet and even some American streets. With the United States beset by polarized political debate as well as a surge in displays of nativism, white power and Neo-Nazi beliefs among a more emboldened slice of the population, Wolfenstein no longer feels like a simple, over-the-top caricature of days gone by. Fast forward to the present, however, and the themes now continued in Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus, suddenly gain more meaning.